Healthy choices can be hardest to find

STOCKTON - Personal well-being and fitness are distant goals, unattainable and unimaginable for most south-side residents. Many struggle just to put food on the table.

Kevin Parrish

STOCKTON - Personal well-being and fitness are distant goals, unattainable and unimaginable for most south-side residents. Many struggle just to put food on the table.

Healthy-living challenges are enormous.

There are too few public-health clinics and too many corner liquor stores and ethnic food trucks in south Stockton.

"It's easier to get a 40-ounce malt liquor than an apple," says Michael Tubbs, the Stockton city councilman who represents a large section of the south side. Residents have long paid the price of limited access to public health and poor lifestyle choices.

There are troubling measurements: Diabetes rates are higher than state and national averages. So is the frequency of obesity, hypertension and low birth weights. Life expectancy is a decade shorter than it is in north Stockton.

Geneva Haynes, community services program coordinator for county Public Health Services, is on the front lines.

"I think south Stockton, because of the lack of transportation, has access challenges," she said. "Residents would benefit from more health care services located in the center of the community. There's a certain challenge for the disenfranchised and the low income, and we certainly see that in south Stockton."

Haynes works at the clinic at 1601 E. Hazelton Ave., just three blocks south of the Crosstown and at the far northern end of the south side. "We have a multiplicity of services available here," she says. "But we recognized that no one clinic can do it all."

Beyond physical health, there are mental-health issues that contribute to other problems.

"Substance abuse has made everything else 10 times worse," says the 38-year-old Akkia Pride-Polk, who spent part of her formative years living with her grandmother near Ralph Center at Airport and 9th Street. "There is a stigma about mental health, therefore it is not dealt with. So people self-medicate. This needs to be dealt with."

Pride-Polk works with child-protective services within the San Joaquin County Human Services Agency.

At an even more basic level, there are too few full-service grocery stores. The area has been called a "food desert" by researchers.

The city's Economic Development Department recently completed a market review of south Stockton.

Beyond Rancho San Miguel, at the corner of Airport Way and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, the findings show four other, smaller markets, all located north of 8th Street.

The study clearly demonstrates a need while also identifying five vacant commercial properties that could be used for a future grocery outlet.